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< Back AI, Justice, and Job “Can a Bot go beyond its programming and our inputs to devise unique solutions to novel problems - solutions that exhibit Justice as their determinative Value?” David Cowles Our Fall Issue of Aletheia Today Magazine , our ‘AI Issue’ released 9/1/23, included an article titled, “ Do Bots Know Beauty? ” In that essay, we proposed that there are (at least) three transcendent values: Beauty, Truth, and Justice. We dealt, hopefully to your satisfaction, with Beauty and Truth, but we deliberately left Justice for another day (and that day is today ). Can a Bot be Just? This question has two parts: Can what we mean by ‘justice’ be reduced to an algorithm? Or if not, can a Bot go beyond its programming and our inputs to devise unique solutions to novel problems - solutions that manifest Justice as their determinative Value? More so than Beauty, less so than Truth, Justice can be reduced to an algorithm. We call that algorithm ‘the law’; but then we criticize anyone who blindly follows it. We say they’re being overly legalistic . Like Solomon, we instinctively know that Justice is more than a legal code, no matter how well-intentioned or expertly drawn it may be. Justice is rooted in the ineffable. Aquinas, for example, says that secular law is normative… but only to the extent that it is consistent with God’s law. Dial 611. Call up the specific mitzvah of Torah; they represent an early effort to codify – or program – Justice. Now add the 2-general mitzvah, aka the Great Commandment, a recognition that the law must always be interpreted and applied in the broader context of Justice per se . Even so, it would be a huge mistake to treat Torah as an algorithm. In all cases, it requires interpretation and application by a competent Rabbi (Midrashim, Talmud). Even more importantly, during the period of the Judges , when God ruled Israel directly (through Torah), “everyone did what was right in their own eyes”. (Judges XX: SS) The justice of law is always mitigated by Justice as Value - justice as it is experienced and expressed in collective tradition and in personal conscience. More broadly, the history of Judeo-Christianity itself can be viewed as a dialectic of law and value. As Jewish theology evolved during the first millennium BCE, the migration of Torah from tablets of stone to hearts of flesh was a recurrent theme. When Christianity burst onto the scene (c. 30 CE) the dichotomy of law and value sharpened even further. Jesus said, “…Not an iota, not a jot, will pass from the Law until all is accomplished.” (Matthew 5: 18), but Paul wrote, “Now that faith (value) has some, we are no longer under the law.” (Galatians 3: 25) Of course, both are correct. The Christian project is the merger of Justice as Law with Justice as Value. But the dichotomy of Justice as Value vs. Justice as Law goes back much further than Jesus and Paul; it’s older than the Judges, and it’s even older than Moses himself. In fact, it goes all the way back to the story of Job , one of Western civilization’s oldest narratives. The version memorialized in the Biblical Book of Job could be aptly subtitled, Justice: Algorithm or Value? Refresher : Job, a just and prosperous man, suddenly hits a streak of ‘bad luck’ (to say the least): his family is wiped out, his wealth lost, his health destroyed. It is assumed, not without reason, that God is responsible for Job’s misfortunes. Unfortunately, Job is joined on his ‘dung hill’ by three so-called comforters, men of high standing who have traveled a great distance to commiserate with their colleague. These self-appointed divine surrogates defend the notion of Justice as Algorithm: they try to persuade Job that it is his ‘sins’ that have triggered this dreadful series of events. Job will have none of it. He insists that he has committed no sin remotely proportionate to his sufferings. Beyond that, Job contends that Justice is more than tit-for-tat, that it is a Value, not an Algorithm: judgement should be based on the totality, including subjective intent, not just on naked acts taken out-of-context. Our hero is so confident of his concept of Justice that he uses it to ‘call God out’ and what ensues is one of the fiercest battles in the history of playgrounds. Remember Ali-Forman, the Rumble in the Jungle ? A Forman win was considered so certain that some of Ali’s handlers wanted the fight called off. Instead, Ali sat on the ropes for 7 rounds and then in the 8th stepped out from the shadows and knocked Forman out with a single 5 punch volley. Remember God-Job, the Rumble in the Desert ? Same idea! Bystanders are offering 100-to-1 odds, and still the ‘Job line’ has no takers. Predictably, God shows up in a whirlwind calculated to terrify his accuser. For several chapters, God rants while Job whispers. God taunts Job for his comparative lack of accomplishments. He threatens Job with monsters, Behemoth and Leviathan. He puts Job on a par with ‘uninhabited grassland’. Job is cowed but not crushed; he stands his ground. In the end, seeing that he can’t intimidate Job, like all bullies, God gives up . He admits that he has been badly represented by his surrogates, and he concedes that Job has Justice on his side: Justice is a Value, not an Algorithm! So back to Bots. As with Beauty, if a Bot can reach this same conclusion (God’s) on its own, not relying solely on its programming or on our inputs, then that Bot may claim to be conscious...and I’ll support that claim. And if not…then it is just a very expensive, albeit very useful, hunk of inanimate, unconscious silicon. Stay tuned! Keep the conversation going! 1. Click here to comment on this TWS. 2. To subscribe (at no cost) to TWS and ATM, follow this link . 3. We encourage new articles and reprints from freelance writers ; click here to view out Writers’ Specs. 4. Aletheia Today Magazine (ATM) will be devoting its entire fall issue (released 9/1/23) to artificial intelligence (AI). What are the philosophical, theological, cultural and even spiritual implications of AI powered world? If you’d like to contribute to the AI Issue, click here . Share Previous Next

< Back Ayala Emmett Contributor Ayala Emmett Ph.D. is a Professor Emeritus at the University of Rochester. You can read more about her accomplishments and writing credits by following this link . Harriet Tubman Joins Six Women of Courage in the Exodus Story--Passover Part Two

“But deliver us from evil,” this last verse is the key to entire prayer. < Back St. Paul’s Lord’s Prayer David Cowles Oct 15, 2022 “But deliver us from evil,” this last verse is the key to entire prayer. “Our Father who art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name, Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, On earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread And forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us, And lead us not into temptation, But deliver us from evil.” In his First Letter to the Corinthians, St. Paul wrote, “So, three things remain: faith, hope and love, but the greatest of these is love” (1 Cor. 13:13), (Read ATM's "Faith, Hope, Love" here. ) but what does that have to do with the Lord’s Prayer? Although the Lord’s Prayer is very short, it nonetheless has a lot of structure. It divides into 4 couplets. The opening is concerned with the first of Paul’s last things, faith: Our Father who art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name… The first tenet of Christian faith is that God exists and that he is benevolent, as a father would be benevolent. The first line of the prayer states that clearly. However, God is not apparent n the phenomenal world, at least not immediately. The ‘phenomenal world’ is the world of time and space and qualities. It is what Parmenides called, Doxa , the realm of appearance. This is the world we inhabit and the only world we know, at least the only world we know or can know by direct experience. Stephen Hawking pointed out, experience can only occur in the context of time (and entropy, possibly just another name for time). Therefore, we can only have direct knowledge of the phenomenal world. God is in ‘heaven,’ i.e., the noumenal realm, corresponding to Parmenides’ Aletheia , the realm of truth. The noumenal world exists outside of space and time; it is eternal. The second tenet of Christian faith is that what you see is not all that you get. Finally, God’s name is ‘holy.’ It may have already struck you that Scripture is inordinately concerned with names (e.g., Exodus 3). This is because in ancient times, your name was not just your ‘handle’; your name defined your relationship with the rest of the world. It was the first derivative of who you were . Because God’s name is holy, it is unique, as his relationship with the world is unique. God is not just an entity among entities; God is special. This is the third tenet of Christian faith: “I believe in one God…” The first stanza is an affirmation of the existence and nature of God, and it is an exquisite expression of faith. The second stanza of the Lord’s Prayer concerns the second of Paul’s second so-called ‘theological virtues:’ hope. Hope is also rooted in the noumenal world. Only a child is satisfied with the hopes of a phenomenal nature (e.g., Santa Claus). As adults, we understand that the phenomenal world is bound to disappoint. True hope must be noumenal; we must hope for something lasting, something eternal in fact, and this is something that can only be found in the noumenal realm. And that is exactly what the Lord’s Prayer gives us next: Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, On earth as it is in heaven… Christian hope is hope that the noumenal world, God’s kingdom, will somehow merge with the phenomenal world so that God’s will may be preeminent in both. In that way, the noumenal world ‘redeems’ the phenomenal world. What is the fleeting in the temporal world is ‘saved’ in the noumenal realm. This second stanza is both an affirmation and a prayer. We pray that somehow the noumenal and phenomenal realms may merge so that “God may be all in all” (1 Cor. 15:28b). It bridges ‘the kingdom already’ with ‘the kingdom not yet.’ Of course, in our modern age, many intellectuals (e.g., empiricists, realists, materialists) and everyday citizens believe that the phenomenal world is all there is. They do not believe that there is a noumenal world underpinning it; and there is nothing anyone can do or say to prove them wrong because we can have no direct experience of the noumenal world. For that reason, we say that the reality of the noumenal realm is a matter of faith and hope. The first two stanzas of the Lord’s Prayer define that noumenal world. The third stanza is concerned with ‘love,’ the third of Paul’s virtues and the ‘greatest.’ Unlike faith and hope, love is rooted in the phenomenal world. Love concerns relationships between entities (phenomena). It has an emotional (‘conceptual’) component and a behavioral (‘physical’) component. Unlike faith and hope, all of us have directly experienced love to one extent or another; there is no serious doubt that it exists. Why does Paul say that love is the ‘greatest’ of the theological virtues? God created the world with the capacity for good. But if it were not for love, that creation would have been still born. Love is what sustains the world. Without love, new entities could not come into being. God loves the phenomenal world through the entities that make it up. God has created the phenomenal world to support love between those entities. God has placed the capacity for love into the fundamental structure of the phenomenal world. Love is all around you. But that is not enough. Entities must, of their own free accord, allow themselves to love and be loved. Love begins when entities see past their apparent self-interest and see the world through each other’s eyes. Love matures when two entities are willing to suppress their apparent self-interest in order to meet each other’s needs. Love is consummated when both entities realize that their own self-interest is ultimately best served when the self-interest of others is met. This is the foundation of relationship per se and of community. So, why is love the most important of the theological virtues? First, while we rightly trace the origin of the phenomenal world to the noumenal realm, without love between entities, the phenomenal world could not sustain itself. Love in the phenomenal world is the continuing expression of God’s creative act. Second, without love between entities in the phenomenal realm, the hope that the noumenal and phenomenal worlds might somehow merge (above) would be in vain. Love is the bridge between the phenomenal and the noumenal, the initial realization of the noumenal in the phenomenal. Consider the Great Commandment, found in several places in both the New and Old Testaments: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it. Love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.” (Matt. 22: 34-40) Our love of God is directed toward the noumenal world. It is a fitting companion of faith and hope. We have faith in the existence and nature of God. We hope that the fleeting entities that constitute the phenomenal realm will somehow be saved in the noumenon. And we love God, who is the object of our faith and hope. In fact, it is our love of God that reveals seals our faith and hope. Only if they are sincerely held can faith and hope inspire love. That same love, initially directed toward the noumenal realm, also operates in the phenomenal realm. The love that we direct toward God in the noumenal realm is the same love that we exchange with other entities in the phenomenal realm. Further, love only occurs in the phenomenal realm when you love another entity ‘as yourself.’ You accept the other as your ontological equal in every way. You place the welfare of the other on the same level as your own. You even see yourself in the other. ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ Even more surprising, the Great Commandment tells us that loving our neighbors as ourselves is the same thing as loving God with all our heart. Love of neighbor in the phenomenal realm is love of God in the noumenal realm. In fact, love between us is a foretaste of love in the ‘kingdom come,’ the merging of the noumenal and phenomenal realms. When we love our neighbors as ourselves, God’s will is done on earth…as it is in heaven. That is why the Great Commandment is one commandment, not two! One commandment, two expressions – a noumenal expression and a phenomenal expression; but to quote Bob Marley, it’s “one love." The Lord’s Prayer presents faith and hope in a clear and succinct manner; it says just exactly what we would expect it would say, only it says it much better than we could have said it. The exposition of love, on the other hand, is unexpected and rather arcane. Give us this day our daily bread, And forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us, “Give us this day our daily bread.” We are not expecting God to feed us directly (as with mana ). What we are affirming is that God created a world capable of meeting the physical needs of all its creatures. (That it systematically fails to do so is a function of sin: greed, cruelty, apathy, etc.) God created the universe to be free, but with a fundamental structural bias toward ‘The Good.’ That bias manifests God’s love for the world and for the ‘creatures’ that constitute it. We are accustomed to asking God for forgiveness; but the Lord’s Prayer tells a different story. Forgiveness takes place, at least initially, in the phenomenal realm. We are called upon to forgive those who trespass against us and when we do, that is when we experience forgiveness: It is in pardoning that we are pardoned. (Prayer of St. Francis) In essence, we forgive ourselves by forgiving others and when we forgive ourselves, God forgives us. Forgiveness in the phenomenal realm translates into forgiveness in the noumenal world: Whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven . (Mt. 16: 19) Forgiveness is one of the many ‘middle voice’ concepts at Christianity’s core. With forgiveness, there is no subject or object. The one who forgives is the one who is forgiven. Forgiveness is reflexive and recursive. And lead us not into temptation, But deliver us from evil.” “And lead us not into temptation,” is probably the most difficult line in the entire prayer. It suggests that God could, if he chose, induce us to sin; but, of course, that is radically impossible because God is all good and incapable of evil. God created this world to be free; if we yield to temptation (sin), we yield of our own free will. The devil didn’t make you do it; the dog didn’t eat your homework. You did! Paradoxically, at the moment we give in to temptation, we surrender a piece of our freedom as well. We consent to be ‘enslaved.’ So, how are we to understand this verse? We need the context provided by the final line of the prayer: “But deliver us from evil.” In fact, this last verse is the key to the entire prayer. To understand it, we need to make a quick detour by way of St. Augustine. God is good. God is denotatively (not connotatively) synonymous with Good. God is also being. God is also denotatively (not connotatively) synonymous with Being. Therefore, Good is denotatively (not connotatively) synonymous with Being. This is a long-winded way of saying that everything in the world God created, everything that has being, to the extent that it has being, is good; and everything that is good, to the extent the extent that it is good, has being. So, why don’t we experience the world this way? Because given the freedom to make their own choices, the world and the entities in it don’t always choose ‘good.’ Temptation is the lure to choose something other than the good, and when entities choose something other than the good, they surrender a bit of their being (as well as their freedom). They make themselves a little less than they otherwise were. So, just as love is the foretaste of the Kingdom of Heaven, so sin is the foretaste of death; it is the gradual annihilation of phenomenal being. As Augustine taught, evil is simply a privation of Good, a privation of Being. Therefore, the idea of a totally evil being (‘Evil’) is apparently an oxymoron. Such a being, by definition, could not exist because only things that are at least to some extent ‘good’ can ‘be.’ Even the worst of us must have a spark of good somewhere, however well concealed it may be. Nevertheless, while there is no perfectly evil being, there is a perfectly evil process on the loose in the world. We know it on the personal level as ‘death’ and on the cosmic level as ‘entropy’. We all know that the one and only sure thing in our lives (besides taxes) is personal death. Likewise, the inexorably increasing entropy in our universe guarantees that that all order in that universe will eventually be wiped out, and when that happens the universe will cease to exist. We will revert to the way the world was before God said, “Let there be light”: “And the earth was without form or shape, with darkness over the abyss and a mighty wind sweeping over the waters.” (Genesis 1: 2) In other words, pure disorder, chaos, the equivalent of non-being. Absent a noumenal dimension to reality, nothing remains of us when we die. It is as if everything we experienced, everything we felt, everything we thought, everything we learned, everything we accomplished was erased in an instant. Life is like an Etch-a-Sketch . People are fond of saying, “Well, at least he had a good life.” No, he didn’t. He had no life at all. It is as if he had never existed. Likewise, at ‘the end of time,’ the universe itself will vanish and everything that ever happened in that universe will be erased. No trace will remain. Time and space themselves will disappear. Once again, it will be as though the universe had never existed. So, if death doesn’t get you, entropy certainly will; either way it will be as if you never were, as if nothing ever was. The phenomenal realm, then, is not just a temporal realm, it is a temporary realm! Once it did not exist, once again it will not exist. That is not what ‘being’ is. Being, by definition, is imperishable. You can’t both ‘be’ and ‘not be’; even Hamlet understood that! You either are or you are not, period. In the phenomenal realm, things become and things decay; that is the nature of phenomena. But that is not what being is. Being is unchanged, regardless of the various ‘accidents’ that express it from time to time. Being (per Parmenides) is what is unchangeable about entities that are otherwise in the process of continuous change (Heraclitus). Hint : Nothing is unchangeable, save that it is! So, what is the evil from which we pray for God to deliver us? It is death, it is entropy. Now, we know that even saints die, and we don’t imagine that God will somehow reverse the process of entropy in the world, so what does this mean? God delivers us from evil by virtue of his noumenal nature. Everything that exists, exists both in the phenomenal realm and in the noumenal realm. Our phenomenal selves will vanish, as indeed will the whole phenomenal realm. Our noumenal selves, on the other hand, are eternal and can never perish. We ‘hope’ (see above) that our experiences in the phenomenal realm will be eternally preserved in the noumenal world. We hope that ‘we’ will be so preserved. David Cowles is the founder and editor-in-chief of Aletheia Today Magazine. He lives with his family in Massachusetts where he studies and writes about philosophy, science, theology, and scripture. He can be reached at david@aletheiatoday.com. Previous Next Share Do you like what you just read? Subscribe today and receive sneak previews of Aletheia Today Magazine articles before they're published. Plus, you'll receive our quick-read, biweekly blog, Thoughts While Shaving. Subscribe Thanks for subscribing! Click here. 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< Back Antonyms David Cowles Antonyms. No such thing! Not-X includes the shadow of X. Example: ‘Pretty’ and ‘Ugly’. ‘Pretty’ refers to the totality (gestalt) of a person, place, or thing. ‘Ugly’ refers to those elements of the aforementioned that are not consistent with a ‘pretty’ whole. ‘Pretty’ and ‘ugly’ appear to be antonyms…but they’re not. In fact, they operate on two entirely different syntactic levels. ‘Ugly’ actually derives its meaning from the concept of ‘pretty’. Therefore, we can say ‘ugly’ includes “the shadow of ‘pretty’”; but not so the other way around. Antonyms. No such thing! Not-X includes the shadow of X. Example: ‘Pretty’ and ‘Ugly’. ‘Pretty’ refers to the totality (gestalt) of a person, place, or thing. ‘Ugly’ refers to those elements of the aforementioned that are not consistent with a ‘pretty’ whole. ‘Pretty’ and ‘ugly’ appear to be antonyms…but they’re not. In fact, they operate on two entirely different syntactic levels. ‘Ugly’ actually derives its meaning from the concept of ‘pretty’. Therefore, we can say ‘ugly’ includes “the shadow of ‘pretty’”; but not so the other way around. Another example: Good and evil. Antonyms, right? Not so fast. Evil is the absence of Good. But Good is a synonym for Being itself. Therefore, absolute Evil cannot ‘exist’, only ‘relative’ evil. Absolute Evil is simply non-existence. My grandson says that “everything exists”…and he’s right. In fact, the Many Worlds Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics, dominant in scientific circles today, states that anything that can be is, has been, or will be. But evil/nothing/non-Being stands outside the domain of ‘everything’. So, when I said that there was no such thing as an antonym, I was wrong! ‘Evil/nothing/non-Being’ is in fact the universal antonym, the common antonym of every thing. ‘The common antonym of everything’ actually has a name: “Entropy”. It is the inexorable process of increasing disorder in the cosmos that will eventually lead to a state of universal non-Being, which of course is no state at all. One is reminded of the Vacuum Cleaner Monster in the Beatles’ movie, Yellow Submarine: he first swallows everything around him, then the universe itself, and finally he swallows himself. Therefore, entropy is its own antonym. Previous Next

Rabbi Dr. Jon Kelsen is Dean at YCT, where he has previously taught Talmud and Pedagogy. Prior to this, Rabbi Kelsen was Rosh Kollel of the Drisha Kollel as well as an adjunct faculty member at the Pardes Institute. He received ordination from Rabbis Daniel Landes and Zalman Nehemiah Goldberg, and received his doctorate in Education and Jewish Studies at New York University as a Wexner Graduate Fellow. < Back Rabbi Dr. Jon Kelsen Contributor Rabbi Dr. Jon Kelsen is Dean at YCT, where he has previously taught Talmud and Pedagogy. Prior to this, Rabbi Kelsen was Rosh Kollel of the Drisha Kollel as well as an adjunct faculty member at the Pardes Institute. He received ordination from Rabbis Daniel Landes and Zalman Nehemiah Goldberg, and received his doctorate in Education and Jewish Studies at New York University as a Wexner Graduate Fellow. Parshat Emor: Making it All Count

< Back The Great River David Cowles “What the Cross is to Christianity…the River is to Process Philosophy.” Texas and Mexico are separated by the Rio Grande, the ‘Great River’, but for folks living in Palestine, the Great River is the Jordan. What’s the Great River on your patch? The Mighty Mississippi, the meandering Missouri, or the Crafty Connecticut? Rivers divide us (on one axis)…and unite us (on another); they are like an optical filter. Turned one way, you see the river as a barrier. Rotate the lens 90° - now you see the river as a conduit. River-watching is like a double slit experiment. Turn the apparatus one way, you’ve got particles; rotate 90°, ‘you’ve got mail’! Or…they are like an osmotic membrane. They allow selected items to cross the barrier and they block others. They can mediate flow to be bi-directional…or one way only. BTW, the ontological entity previously known as ‘you’ is also a membrane, mediating flow between the 30 trillion cells that form your body and the 1 trillion galaxies that constitute your universe. Rivers crisscross the planet, branching, merging, dividing and uniting. For example, the Mississippi River connects North and South but divides East from West. The Connecticut River connects the Quebec border with Long Island Sound but separates the BSO from Tanglewood. What the Cross is to Christianity and the Star of David to Judaism, the River is to Process Philosophy (Heraclitus through Whitehead). It is both a symbol and an example of the membranes that define entities. But it is also an agent of the flow that connects those entities. A river is a Gestalt According to Whitehead, Being itself is the reciprocal process of ‘one becoming many’ and ‘many becoming one’. Rivers do that, all by themselves. Rivers form Gaia’s neural network. They facilitate and regulate the flow of information (goods and services, migratory populations) across continents. We ‘think’ by moving electrons across synapses. Trees ‘think’ by secreting and absorbing molecules. Some bacteria ‘think’ by varying the concentration of iron in their cytoplasm. Is it that much of a stretch to imagine Gaia ‘thinking’ by transporting people and goods, back and forth, from one location to another, along her network of rivers? Wait, Gaia, thinking? Isn’t that preposterous? How can a planet, or a biosphere, think? To paraphrase Walter Mondale (1984), “Where’s the brain?” Answer: Don’t need one, Scarecrow! Let’s take ‘you’ for example. You are made up of about 30 trillion independent living organisms called cells. 3% of these are neurons, cells that form tissue known as ‘the nervous system’. Each of these cells has some sort of ‘cellular self-awareness’ but how does that up-link to you deciding to order pistachio ice cream today instead of your usual strawberry? Whatever is going on with you at the level of organism is presumably opaque to the cells that make up that organism…and vice versa. Do you know what your neuron XK275P is experiencing right now? Have you ever known what any specific neuron is experiencing, ever? Once upon a time, you were a fertilized sex cell. Presumably, you (or something pretending to be you) enjoyed cellular self-awareness. Over a lifetime, that one cell (you) reproduces about 100 trillion virtually identical copies of itself. Which one is you? E pluribus unum? Or all 100 trillion? Collectively? Selectively? Or sequentially? Do you imagine that your individual neurons know pistachio from strawberry. Even if… Would they have any sense of the complex socio-economic terrain that must be navigated for you to get ice cream of any flavor? Almost everything that happens depends for its meaning on a few basic organizing principles (logoi). We are able to ‘read the signs’ because we have assimilated those principles. How would you understand a group of folks lining up at a Baskin Robbins if you had no concept of person, group, infrastructure, commerce, employment, alimentation, or confection? To a bacterium, what we call the World would at most appear as chaotic qualia, possibly (but not certainly) disguising some deeper but seemingly indecipherable pattern(s). I would expect that whatever may or may not be going on at the level of Gaia might appear to us just this way - the way our World must appear to a bacterium. We might not even notice it and, if we did, we wouldn’t be able to find the meaning, if indeed there is any meaning to be found. According to Heraclitus (above), everything flows! Rivers flow: Fluid dynamics. So does land: Plate tectonics. Everything flows relative to everything else. Light, in a vacuum, flows at the speed of ‘c’ while I, on a couch, flow at the speed of ‘0’. (Don’t worry though, I’m just giving light a head start.) But that’s not right either! Turns out, light and I are both travelling at the exact same speed. But light is travelling through space while I’m travelling through time. So what? Well, light gets to be ‘everywhere, all at once, all the time’ while I’m all dressed up with nowhere to go. (Guess I should have gone to some of the many fitness clubs I joined.) My brother’s out jogging right now in fact. He’s determined to catch up to light. And true, because he’s moving a lot faster than me in space, he’s moving a little slower than me in time. He is determined to outlive me. I don’t have the heart to tell him that he’s only gaining nanoseconds. Being is contrast. Flow rates vary (me, my brother, and a photon); spacetime is essentially a flow meter. Everything flows and everything flows at the same rate (‘c’); the diversity of the world is a function of ‘the variable allocation of that flow between space and time’ – the Great River! Keep the conversation going. 1. Click here to comment on this TWS. 2. To subscribe (at no cost) to TWS and ATM, follow this link . 3. We encourage new articles and reprints from freelance writers ; click here to view out Writers’ Specs. Keep the conversation going. Previous Next

< Back I'm SO Proud of You! David Cowles Jun 8, 2023 “To my ear, ‘I’m so proud of you’ is culture-speak for ‘I’m not proud of you at all.’” It’s what every child longs to hear. It trumps I love you by a mile – 6 simple words that satisfy our need for Identity , that reinforce our sense of Belonging , and that affirm our Potency . It’s a heady cocktail…especially for underage drinkers. What does it mean when someone says, “I’m proud of you”? It expresses the speaker’s satisfaction or pleasure at some thing you’re being or some thing you’ve done. Most parents won’t say directly, “Ok, now I can love you!” but those same parents are perfectly willing to say the exact same thing, provided it is encrypted. I’m proud of you is code for Now I can truly love you . For confirmation, listen in on the Litany of Life (composer unknown): “Now I’ve said my ABCs, tell me what you think of me. Refrain : I’m so proud of you! “You just got your first Little League base hit. Refrain : I’m so proud of you! “I know it hurt but you didn’t cry. Refrain : I’m so proud of you! “You got all A’s on your report card. Refrain : I’m so proud of you! “You’re the first person in our family to graduate high school/college/medical school. Refrain : I’m so proud of you! “You have a great new job. Refrain : I’m so proud of you! “You’ve made the ultimate sacrifice. Rest in peace! Refrain : I’m so proud of you!” OMG, a lifetime wasted trying to make a parent proud so they can love me! To my ear, I’m so proud of you is culture-speak for I’m not proud of you at all. When someone says they’re proud of me, they mean that they are proud of some task I’ve performed, some goal I’ve achieved, or some role I’ve assumed. But my accomplishments and my personae are not me ! They are costumes I’ve put on, usually at the insistence of some overbearing director. You may have enjoyed my performance as the title character in Hamlet . You can even say you’re ‘proud’ of the job I did: I wish you wouldn’t, but you can say it if you must. What you cannot say is that you are proud of Hamlet, the Prince of Denmark because, news flash, he’s not real! Yet every time you say, “I’m so proud of you,” that’s exactly what you’re saying. What could be more foolish than to be proud of a fictional character! Oliver Twist, Stephen Dedalus, Rocky Balboa, and me. Yet whenever I assume some role, I’m just ‘getting into character’. I may be real, but the character I’m playing is not. You can be proud of me, but you can’t be proud of my character because, news flash, he’s not real! One day each year, Halloween, I take on the role of a witch, a pirate, or a superhero. On the 364 ‘Anti-Halloweens’, I take on the role of ‘a good little boy (or girl)’, especially around Christmas. But I am no more that ‘good kid’ than I am that ‘superhero’. You probably wouldn’t say, “I’m proud of the superhero you’ve become,” so neither should you say, “What a good kid you are! I’m so proud of you.” When I hear you say those words, part of me hears them as “I’m not proud of you at all.” You could have just said, “I love you” and meant it. In which case you would have loved me, regardless of my achievements, or lack thereof, and no matter what roles I happen to be playing at any one time. Or, another idea, how about, “I respect you, I respect the person you’ve become, I respect the things you’re doing?” Hearing those words from you would be seismic. I may be ‘unsheltered’ on the streets of Liverpool, or I may be well housed at #10 ? Are you ‘proud of me’ either way? Didn’t think so! But am I any less ‘me’ in Liverpool than I am in London? Either way, it’s still me! And who knows? Over the course of a lifetime, I might end up being both. So, I’m proud of you has nothing whatsoever to do with me . It’s the semantic equivalent of Look at that gorgeous sunset . Except worse! People who say, “Look at that gorgeous sunset” usually don’t mean to take credit for it. (Exception: God, boasting in the Book of Job. ) But when someone says, “I’m proud of you,” most often that person believes they had something to do with ‘making you the person you are today’. The only person they’re proud of is themselves. So, I’m proud of you means that you are proud of something I’ve done, not of who I am per se . Deeper still, it means “I’m proud of myself for the role I played in enabling you to play your role, or perform your task, so successfully.” When parents say, “I’m proud of you,” they’re taking a victory lap! This does not mean that you can’t say “proud”. You can certainly be proud of yourself for something you’ve accomplished. You set out to get an A in Chemistry and you did; it’s ok for you to feel proud…of yourself. But if I get an A in Chemistry, please don’t detract from my accomplishment by saying that you’re ‘proud of me’. What right do you have to be proud? You didn’t stay up all night studying…or helping me study. When I was 12, I moved from a neighborhood school to an elite school. I was lost. These kids could read…I mean really read: Dickens and the like, while I was still struggling with Dick and Jane . My grandparents swung into action. One or the other of them read every book I was assigned and laboriously talked me through each plot. When June came around at last, my grandparents were justly proud of my grades: ‘C minuses’ all across the board! (We weren’t looking for A’s!) They were entitled to be proud; they earned those grades more than I did. But that is the exception that proves the rule. So what’s the alternative? You could have said, “I salute you” or “I congratulate you”, but that wouldn’t convey the same intensity as “I’m proud of you”, would it? Pride attests to a powerful, not to say incestuous, relationship between two actors: a puppeteer and her puppet. So, I’m proud of you is not only code for Now I can love you ; it’s also code for Now I can love myself . So can you never say “I’m proud of you” again? I wouldn’t go that far! Chances are your kids are used to hearing it from you and it might confuse them if you suddenly stopped. Try substituting the word ‘respect’ for ‘pride’; see if that works for you. If not, if you must say, “Proud”, make sure you understand what it is you’re saying when you say it. Who’s proud of whom and for what? Deconstruct! Then try to convey to your children that you love them regardless of their behavior or achievements…then try to believe it yourself! Keep the conversation going! 1. Click here to comment on this TWS. 2. To subscribe (at no cost) to TWS and ATM, follow this link . 3. We encourage new articles and reprints from freelance writers ; click here to view out Writers’ Specs. 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< Back Nicholas Senz Contributor Nicholas Senz is a husband and father who tries every day to live Galatians 2:20: "It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me." He is Director of Religious Education at Our Lady of Mount Carmel Catholic Church in Mill Valley, CA, a managing editor at Catholic Stand, and a Master Catechist. A native of Verboort, Oregon, Nicholas holds master's degrees in philosophy and theology from the Dominican School of Philosophy and Theology in Berkeley, CA. His work has appeared at Catholic Exchange, Crisis Magazine, Homiletic and Pastoral Review, and his own blog, Two Old Books . Nicholas is a science fiction aficionado, Tolkien devotee, avid Anglophile, and consumer of both police procedurals and popcorn in large quantities, usually together. Twitter at @NickSenz . Transubstantiation for the Rest of Us

< Back Schoedinger’s Cat and Consciousness David Cowles Sep 12, 2024 “When Uncle Henry, drunk on Christmas eggnog, accidentally knocks the lid off the box and peers inside, puss’ status is settled, once and for all." You all know the story of Schoedinger’s much loved cat. It’s both dead and alive. The problem is that puss’ fate is dependent on a quantum mechanical event that remains in a suspended state known as ‘superposition’ until it is properly observed. In fact, the whole experimental apparatus remains in superposition until a qualified external observer is introduced. In the words of Jeremy Hillary Boob, PhD, “Be empirical; look!” ( Yellow Submarine ). And what better way to ‘look’ than by using light, i.e. injecting photons into the apparatus, allowing them to ‘read’ the state of things inside the box? But no joy! The photons simply become part of the experimental apparatus, the entirety of which remains in superposition. But when Uncle Henry, drunk on Christmas eggnog, accidentally knocks the lid off the box and peers inside, puss’ status is settled, once and for all. How is Uncle Henry different from a bunch of photons? His size? His blood alcohol level? Yes, but irrelevantly so. Henry is significantly different because he’s conscious, dimly conscious but conscious, nonetheless. A photon can enter the experimental apparatus in superposition. Uncle Henry cannot. Uncle Henry not only perceives the state-of-affairs inside the box, but he perceives himself perceiving it. Henry has volunteered, you see, to be part of a thought experiment originally devised by Hungarian physicist, Eugene Wigner back in 1961. Henry has sacrificed his usual temperance in the interests of science. Wigner incorrectly supposed that a qualified ‘external observer’ needed a certain minimum level of intelligence to affect a ‘collapse of the wave function’. Sober, Henry might meet Widget’s criterion, but drunk? Probably not. But Henry has not passed out…yet. When he stumbles into puss’ box, he is still conscious. It is his consciousness, not his intelligence, that collapses the wave function. How come? Consciousness is inherently recursive, self-aware. In fact, recursion is what consciousness is. Think of a polyhedron lined with reflective mirrors. Everything reflects everything else – that’s consciousness. Most likely, it will prove to be some sort of twist in the fabric of spacetime. What’s important is the non-linearity of awareness. Simple awareness won’t cause the system to decohere; awareness of that awareness is what does the trick. As Uncle Henry proved, consciousness and intelligence are largely unrelated. A few decades ago, consciousness was thought to be the exclusive province of homo sapiens . Now it is widely believed that at least some other animal species are conscious as well. How about plants? Fungi? Bacteria? On the other hand, IBM, Google, et al. have already built machines that are far more intelligent than Henry; but as far as we know they are not yet conscious. Taken to the extreme, a supercomputer could be absorbed into Schoedinger’s coherent apparatus while a single bacterium would collapse the wave function. That’s the power of consciousness. This suggests the possibility of a new sort of ‘Turing Test’. To see if a life form, or machine, is conscious, we ‘merely’ need to determine how a coherent system behaves in its presence. If the system remains coherent, then the subject is not conscious, no matter how intelligent it may be; but if the wave function collapses, voila! And it doesn’t even have to know how to read or write! Am I on to something cutting edge here? Not in the least! 2500 years ago, the Pre-Socratic Greek philosopher, Anaxagoras, proposed a similar model of consciousness. He called it Nous , and he understood it to be a unique aspect of reality, uniform in itself but distinct from everything material: “ Nous is unlimited and self-ruling and has been mixed with nothing, but is alone, by itself…and indeed, it maintains all discernment about everything…all Nous is alike.” All this gives new meaning to the traditional English rhyme: Ding Dong Bell, Pussy’s in the Well. Who threw her in, little Tommy Thin. Who pulled her out, little Tommy Stout. Little Tommy Thin is the apple of his mother’s eye. He’s an all-A student, who loads up on fresh fruits and vegetables and never eats sweets; but he’s totally lacking in compassion. He goes through life unconsciously. He lacks any moral sense. Think sociopath…zombie…or robot. He’s only too willing to place Puss at risk in superposition. And Little Tommy Stout? Well, not so much! Nothing his parents or his teachers have tried makes any difference. He won’t touch healthy food; pies and cakes are his specialty. But Tommy Stout is conscious, and so he has an innate moral sense; he’s compassionate. Instinctively, he collapses the wave function and, thank God, he pulls Pussy out alive. Keep the conversation going. 1. Click here to contact us on any matter. How did you like the post? How could we do better in the future? Suggestions welcome. 2. To subscribe (at no cost) to TWS and ATM, follow this link . 3. We encourage new articles and reprints from freelance writers ; click here to view out Writers’ Specs. Previous Share Next Do you like what you just read and want to read more Thoughts? Subscribe today for free! Thoughts While Shaving - the official blog of Aletheia Today Magazine. Click here.

< Back Determinism…or Entanglement? David Cowles “Take Vegas! The casino’s ‘edge’ is as little as 1% on some bets. At those odds, I should be able to play forever…but probability is not actuality.” “If we could know the position and the momentum of every ‘particle’ at any one time, we would know the position and momentum of every particle at every time.” This is the classical definition of determinism - and it certainly seems to make sense. Consider 'A, then B’ for example. If we believe that A ‘causes’ B, then knowing A means knowing B as well. But let’s take a deeper dive: There’s a problem with our premise, isn’t there? Turns out, we can’t know both the position and the momentum of any particle at any time (Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle)… that’s certainly a bit of a bother for determinists. Worse yet, this is not an issue with our ability to know A; it’s an issue with A itself! It’s not we who are ‘uncertain’ about A; it’s A that is uncertain. It literally can’t make up its mind what it wants to be for Halloween . A is an existential hero. It lives in a permanent state of angst as it searches for an identity that doesn’t exist! Determinism’s apologists (yup, it has ‘apologists’, Stephen Hawking among them) admit Heisenberg but marginalize him: it’s not X that is determined, it’s P(X) – the probability of X. Schrödinger’s Wave Function, simplified as P(X), evolves deterministically. We’re funny about math. We know it’s an artificial logic that incidentally yields uncannily accurate predictions about the real world, but we treat it as the real world. We mistake the map for the territory; we fall prey to what Whitehead called the ‘Fallacy of Misplaced Concreteness’. Take calculus, for example. Brilliant! Don’t leave Earth without it. But it has nothing to do with the real world. Calculus describes a world that is perfectly continuous…but we don’t live in such a world. Still, it is often useful to treat the world as if it were continuous, hence calculus. Take Vegas! The casino’s ‘edge’ is as little as 1% on some bets. At those odds, I should be able to play forever and never run out of money. But probability is not actuality . Probability doesn't prevent me from losing my life’s savings at the craps table, pulling out a gun, shooting 20 fellow punters and taking my own life. The laws of probability are indeed determined, but the stochastic consequences of those laws are not. Food processors are wonderful things; they smooth things out. But when you come to my house for Thanksgiving dinner, your mashed potatoes will be ‘real’, i.e., gloriously lumpy. “Glory be to God for dappled things…” (Gerard Manley Hopkins). We live in a chaotic world, a world in which a butterfly can flap its wings and trigger a tornado, a world in which an untimely ‘7 out’ can set off a mass killing spree. So now we’re face to face with our second challenge: A chaotic world is chaotic because it is strictly determined; anything is capable of triggering anything else. It’s causality ! But how is that any different from a world in which events happen randomly? Wings flap, dice roll, shots are fired, punters perish – these things just happen! What about the connections that seem to crop up between events? Well, what if it’s we who fabricate those connections - after the fact – triggered by accidental resemblances (Freud)? A is round, and B is round, so A and B must somehow be related. What if we make our world look rational…when it isn’t? So we find ourselves in quite a pickle. It makes no empirical difference whether events are determined, chaotic, or random. It doesn’t matter whether everything is caused by something else, or everything is caused by everything else, or nothing is caused by anything else. And you still say we don’t live in a weird world, Horatio? Clearly, the concept of ‘causality’ has no heuristic value. If we want to understand (1) why there are any events at all and/or (2) why events are what they are, we’ll need an entirely different approach. In our world, events are connected but indeterminately. Sometimes B follows A like an Irish twin; sometimes B looks a lot like the postman. We live this every day. “Nothing ever changes!” Until it does! And then, Whoa! Continuity and catastrophe – lumpy, that’s how the world is, not at all the way you’d expect it to be if it were determined, chaotic or random. The world is ‘patterned’…and that pattern is not just in our heads! Ultimately, our world displays solidarity, but not continuity. How can we model such a world? Every event is juxtaposed between what used to be and what is not yet, between what is actual and what is ideal. Without this differance (‘quantum of difference’ per Derrida), the world would be static (and hence non-existent). There would be no incentive, no motive force, for change; temperature could never be other than 0° K. In Norse mythology, the world comes to be in the misty gap ( Ginnungagap ) between ‘absolute heat’ and ‘absolute chill’. Likewise, in our mythology, events come to be in a ‘gap’ between what already is and what might yet be. The lure of an unrealized future tugs on the inertia of an unsatisfying past. Every novel event originates as a reaction against its ‘actual world’, i.e., the ordered multiplicity of prior events. Only one class of entity could simultaneously provoke judgment on what is and appetition for what is yet to be: that’s Value - objective, eternal value – the Good as it manifests in our world. And what might such ‘manifest values’ be? At a minimum, Beauty, Truth, and Justice. Every judgment reflects a valuation, and every aspiration presupposes a goal. But judgment, aspiration, realization, and communication are terms we normally associate with conscious (e.g., human) behavior. They are aspects of reality that resist characterization as determined, chaotic or random. Something seems to be buffering the chaos. Have we entered the controversial realm of ‘intelligent agency’, aka ‘free will’? Every event resembles every other event in some way and to some degree; the ‘resemblance’ can even be ‘negation’ (ground templates figure). But no two events are ever identical. In fact, the phrase ‘identical event’ is an oxymoron. It is as if events were sampling prior events as part of their process of becoming. We see the shadow of the past in the present, but not in a way that is ever perfectly predictable…or ultimately controllable. Ergo History . There is yet one more relevant model to consider: Entanglement. In the 1950s, quiz shows were popular on TV. In those days, contestants were sequestered in soundproof booths. Each would answer questions posed by the host, but neither would know what the other player answered. The same apparatus was used to test for ESP (Extra Sensory Perception). Instead of general knowledge questions, the host would draw a card from a standard deck of playing cards and ask the contestant(s) to say whether the card was red or black. If a subject were right significantly more than 50% of the time, ESP would seem to have been demonstrated. Entanglement is similar. After a Google of questions, a pattern is confirmed. If A answers X, then B also answers X… always ; or if A answers X, B never answers X. But there’s no possibility of communication between A and B. (In reality, it doesn’t have to be always or never ; any meaningful deviation away from 50/50 could indicate entanglement.) Entanglement requires no ‘intelligent agent’ to mute the chaos. An ‘entangled universe’ is neither causal nor random, yet events are coordinated, and that coordination does not require conscious intervention. When two apparently exclusive theories (e.g., intelligent agency and entanglement) account equally well for the same phenomena, it is wise to ask whether the two theories (as ‘Big Chill and Big Crunch’ per Roger Penrose) might actually be the same theory in different guises. Failing that, we should inquire whether the two explanations are complementary (e.g., particles and waves). Can you see where this is going? Well, Bon Voyage! Better you than me. Write to me, though; let me know what the world’s like…once you’ve gone over the edge. David Cowles is the founder and editor-in-chief of Aletheia Today Magazine. He lives with his family in Massachusetts where he studies and writes about philosophy, science, theology, and scripture. He can be reached at david@aletheiatoday.com . Click above to return to Winter 2024. Previous Next

< Back Past, Present, Future David Cowles "So, it turns out that the universe did not have a lot of options when it came to structuring time." “The Past” does not exist – by definition. It consists of events that once happened or might have happened but are not happening now. “The Future” does not exist either – also by definition. It consists of events that will happen or may happen but have not yet happened and are not happening now. What exists is what is happening now, and neither the Past nor the Future is happening. That leaves “The Present”. According to post-modern deconstructionist, Jacques Derrida, the Present consists of all events (potential as well as actual) that are neither elements of the set of actual or possible past events nor elements of the set of actual or possible future events. Derrida follows the Via Negativa ; he defines the Present, not by what it is, but by what it is not. This scheme presupposes that every event is unique. No two events, however similar they may seem, can ever be the same event . Cosmic censorship will not allow an event to happen more than once. Among other things, this allows us to assign each unique event to a specified coordinate region. No two events can have the same coordinates. Otherwise, the world be irreparable chaotic: “…without form or shape, with darkness over the abyss and a mighty wind sweeping over the waters.” (Genesis 1: 2) While innumerable events could occur in any specified coordinate region, only one event does occur in that region. Broadly speaking, there are three popular models of time: Linear Time (e.g., the relentless progression of birthdays), Static Time (all events occur simultaneously), and Cyclical Time ( aka Eternal Recurrence). Eternal Recurrence (Nietzsche, et al.) presents some of the same philosophical problems as Time Travel. In the latter case, ‘the past’ is never a settled matter of fact. Instead of living their lives in the Present, time travelers focus on adjusting the Past to create a different Present . Of course, it’s a fool’s game because any modification of a past event, no matter how slight, can have unanticipated, and possibly catastrophic, consequences. Or it can also have no perceptible consequence at all. Either way it is unpredictable and therefore uncontrollable. Time can amplify or dampen, but it can never just conserve or repeat. Now suppose a time traveler were to go all the way back to the primordial event, Big Bang, and prevent that event from occurring: no universe…and no nosey parker to modify it. A universe in which time travel is a possibility is a universe that does not exist because it is self-erasing. With Eternal Recurrence, the Past cannot be modified but past events can pop back-up anywhere in spacetime. Here, too, the past is never totally in our rearview mirror. Unless the universe is micro-determined, the reoccurrence of a past event does not necessarily ensure that the future will repeat as well…but neither does it preclude such a possibility. And since the possibility is not precluded, we must assume that that will happen at some point. Once that happens, the universe will just ‘seize up’ eliminating any notion of novelty or freedom. So, it turns out that the universe did not have a lot of options when it came to structuring time. Time cannot be recursive! Whether we alter the past to change the present or bring the past forward in order to relive it, time would no longer include a real future, and without a real future, time would not be time. Cain left Eden to earn a degree in urban planning. Abram left Ur to find the Promised Land. Moses left Egypt to create a just society. Generations of Americans went west in pursuit of liberty and/or luxury. None of these ‘heroes’ had any interest in changing the past, or in conserving it for that matter. They understood life as perpetual change, and they sought to harness that change in pursuit of novelty and progress. Time Travel and Eternal Recurrence take that away. Progress is no longer a hope, a dream, a goal, or a project; now our future is found in our past. We look to improve the present not by building a new future but by resuscitating or modifying a spent past. It’s the myth of a Golden Age. Now back to the real world. A world with a non-degenerate dimension of time. This world – the world - consists exclusively of unique events, both actual and potential: (1) whatever happened or might have happened (Past), (2) whatever will or might yet happen (Future), and (3) whatever did not happen and could not happen either in the past or in the future (Present). Present events, then, are not at all like past or future events. The present is the realm of pure potential; it is ever fresh. The Present inherits the past and anticipates the future; therefore, no event is ever either random or determined. There are no efficient or final causes at work in the Present. Whatever happens in the Present is a function of free will, acting on the past (without changing it) and projecting toward the future (without limiting it). The great 20th century physicist, Richard Feynman, took an alternate route but, like Robert Frost, he ended up at the same destination. He defined the Present, positively (rather than negatively ), as the sum of everything that might have happened in the past, whether it did or did not, and everything that might happen in the future, whether it does or does not. He called this method, Sum over Histories . Relative to the actual past, the Present may appear random; relative to the actual future, the Present may appear irrelevant. But relative to a Past that includes everything that might have been, whether or not it was, the Present precludes randomness; likewise, relative to a Future that includes everything that might yet come to be, whether or not it does, precludes any repetition. Either way, you can’t go home again. The Present, as you can see, is stranded on an ontological island. Parodying a Christmas special, the Present is the island of misfit events . Neti, neti – neither past nor future, that is the present. The Present is not an alternate Past or, for that matter, an alternate Future. Since the Present consists of only those events that could not have happened in the past and that cannot happen in the future, the Present is unique – perhaps the paradigmatic example of uniqueness since any overlap with non-present events is strictly prohibited – again, by definition. Traditional Western metaphysics, according to Derrida, defines the Present positively in terms of “what is”. Borrowing from Exodus , chapter 3, the Present “is what is”, it is the “eternal now”. Derrida correctly, in my view, and bravely, acknowledges that any such positive metaphysics must inevitably point to the existence of God, which he, of course, being a 20th century intellectual, denies. To resolve this dilemma, Derrida suggests we define the Present negatively , in terms of what it is not. The question of what it is, if anything, is left open. Present becomes an undefined term in his ontology. ‘God’ is odd man out. In any event, this post-modern Present is not the infinitesimal point posited by Newtonian physics and illustrated on the Real Number Line. It may yet turn out to be an infinitesimal point, or more likely a Planck unit, in which case the set of the present events would have no members (it would be a null set); but we don’t know that yet. It is something to be discovered, not assumed. Our initial hypothesis must be that the Present is a region like the Past and the Future. If the region turns out to be empty, so be it. But ‘region’ implies ‘extension’. If the present occupies a region on the timeline, then presumably, it must have extension along that line. But that would mean that the present was a combination of past and future elements; it would not be ‘Present’ at all, at least not in Derrida’s sense of the word. I see protestors gathering outside my first-floor window. They’re singing songs and carrying signs, mostly saying: Save the Present. Sidebar : if you look closely, you can see that on many of the signs, the word “Present” has overwritten the scratched-out remnants of “Planet." One superannuated hippie is carrying a sign on which “Present” appears to have overwritten “Whales." There is only one way to salvage a real Present: you must assume that ‘Present’ denotes an extensive region on the timeline which, experienced internally, is timeless. Viewed from the outside, the so-called Present appears to have duration (a form of extension); but not when viewed from the inside. The Present is a process, but ‘process’ does not necessarily imply ‘sequence’. We are used to process unfolding in time. But it doesn’t have to be that way. There is no ontologically compelling reason why process needs to be a function of sequence or vice versa . Example : I am listening to the 5th Brandenburg Concerto. It takes about 20 minutes to perform. That performance occupies a place in the spacetime continuum and, if necessary, the experience can be analyzed minute by minute. But as soon as that happens, the Concerto itself disappears. We are no longer ‘experiencing the Concerto’, we are no longer in the Present; now we are dissecting measures written down 300 years ago and/or anticipating the experience of hearing the Concerto performed at a later date. We have allowed the Present to dissolve into the Past/Future. Subjectively, we incorporate the Past and the Future into our experiential Present as Faith and as Hope, respectively. If Anaximander is right and Being occurs only when potential entities self-actualize by giving each other ‘reck’, then the Present is constituted simply as Love. David Cowles is the founder and editor-in-chief of Aletheia Today Magazine. He lives with his family in Massachusetts where he studies and writes about philosophy, science, theology, and scripture. He can be reached at david@aletheiatoday.com . Previous Next

< Back The Haiku Challenge Haiku is a traditional form of Japanese poetry usually consisting of 17 syllables, arranged in three lines of five, seven, and five syllables, respectively. Starting with our Special Beach Issue, each issue of ATM will include Haiku, selected by our editors from submissions by you, our loyal readers. Please send us your Haiku to editor@aletheiatoday.com. Be sure to put “Haiku Challenge” in the subject line, and your seventeen-syllable poem may be shared with the world. (You can read more about haikus and see examples in Haiku Corner in this issue of AT Magazine.) Previous Share Return to the Table of Contents, Beach Issue Next Return to the Table of Contents, June Issue